A bomber, a blast and more bloodshed: Just another day in Kandahar City.

KANDAHAR — A bomber, a blast and more bloodshed: Just another day in Kandahar City.

While the Taliban probably didn't kill Ahmed Wali Karzai in a targeted assassination earlier this week, there's little doubt here they dispatched the suicide bomber who walked into a mosque this morning where mourners had come offering condolences to his family.

Five people were killed and 15 wounded, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor.

“They were saying prayers for Ahmed Wali Karzai and giving their respect to his family when the suicide bomber attacked,” Zalmai Ayubi told the Star a few hours after the explosion at the Sarra Jamai mosque. Located in the southwest part of the city, it was filled with relatives and friends of AWK — as the Afghan president's younger half-brother was known — slain by a trusted associate in his own home on Tuesday.

A sobbing President Hamid Karzai had attended the Wednesday funeral, his sibling's body removed from the governor's palace and taken to the family's nearby ancestral village, Karz, for burial.

Kandahar City had been turned into a ghost-town as national and coalition forces patrolled the streets in huge numbers. Citizens prudently remained indoors, shops shuttered, fearful the Taliban would ratchet up the kill-count by striking at the funeral cortege, which included a dozen provincial governors, MPs from Kabul and other dignitaries.

But there had been no significant violence apart from the IED hit by the Helmand governor's motorcade, which resulted in minor injuries to two bodyguards.

Instead, apparently, the insurgents struck 24 hours later at the softer target of a memorial reception hosted by Ahmed Wali Karzai's immediate family.

The suicide bomber, a teenager, hid the explosive in his turban.

“After the VIPs and dignitaries left following the funeral, they decided to decrease security,” said Ayubi. “That was a mistake.”

While no federal cabinet ministers were among the casualties in Thursday's suicide attack and President Karzai was not present, an imam — Hekmatulla Hekmat, head of the Kandahar Ulema Council — and a senator, Ismala Afganmal, were among those killed, sources say.

Many in Kandahar had feared Ahmed Wali's murder would spark a wave of revenge killings in this volatile province over which the political strongman had ruled unchallenged — except by the Taliban — as de facto governor, though his official title was president of the provincial district council. The shooter, however — a commander of the security squad that manned four police checkpoints in a district just south of Kandahar City — wad from the same subtribe as the victim, which led locals to hope there would be no bloody retribution as dictated by Pashtunwali code of honour and no bloodbath.

While the Taliban claimed boastful credit for Ahmed Wali Karzai's murder, it's widely believed the triggerman acted alone, for personal reasons, and was never allied with the insurgency.

With little for-show muscle-flexing by the Taliban in the immediate aftermath of the killing — AWK shot once in the head and once in the chest while signing documents — the city heaved a huge sigh of relief, cautiously optimistic that it had passed through the latest crisis relatively unscathed.

Instead, a suicide bomber — as yet unidentified — sashayed past security at a mosque and drew much blood again.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

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